FAQ on Net Neutrality
Here are five frequently-asked questions about net neutrality. Your challenge: answer each in 150 words or less. Here's my cut.
1. What does net neutrality actually mean? Is it a meaningful protection for the web, or, as some say, a romanticized ideal that's getting in the way of progress?
Think of the pipes and wires that you use to go online as a sidewalk. The question is whether the sidewalk should get a cut of the value of the conversations that you have as you walk along. The traditional telephone model has been that the telephone company doesn't get paid more if you have a particularly meaningful call — they're just providing a neutral pipe.
This argument is about whether companies selling highspeed transport mechanisms for the internet should be allowed to price discriminate — charge different ”content providers” (like YouTube) for the privilege of reaching you and me. Because Americans have so few choices of broadband access providers, allowing these providers to leverage their market power over transport in order to have exclusive control over “programming” online is a matter of great concern.
The risk is that the network providers will keep everyone who hasn't paid protection money to them at 2001 speeds.
2. The cable and telephone companies argue that they need additional revenue to build 'the internet of the future' and so the Googles and Amazons of the world (who will benefit from that new internet) need to pay their fair share. Is that a legitimate argument?
What they mean by 'the internet of the future' is a cable system — not the internet. They'll be using their market power over broadband access to force us all to accept their cable-ized version of 'the internet' and to force nascent Googles to pay protection money. Those nascent Googles may never come into being — so net neutrality is a right-to-life movement for new technology.
These incumbents don't have competition. We have no real information about their costs or how their networks work. We're having this argument about “need for additional revenue” in the dark. They've been promising to build broadband networks for a long time, and we're falling behind as a country.
We know from Japan that competition for broadband access (lower prices, higher speeds) comes when you force the incumbent to “unbundle” (let competitors use its facilities on nondiscriminatory terms). That's the real 'internet of the future.'
3. Net-neutrality's supporters are concerned that if you give the cable and telephone companies latitude to control who travels through their pipes (and at what speed), it puts those gatekeepers in a position to favor their own products and services over their competitors'. The fear is that innovation will suffer. Is that a concern you share?
Emphatically yes. The whole point of price discrimination (the goal of the cablecos and telcos) is that you get to choose who pays more to travel your network. Network providers will have every incentive to favor their own services and make exclusive deals, and in the absence of a simple rule of separation between transport and services (”you're only a pipe”) we'll be trapped in litigation for years over what discrimination is appropriate and what isn't.
Innovation happened online because the transport (the pipes) were largely “dumb.” This allowed new things to be developed without anyone having to ask permission of the telcos. The deepest pockets are not the deepest sources of innovation — to the contrary. The telcos think of the internet as a “broken network.” They only know about networks over which they have perfect control. When was the last time a new telephone service was introduced? Call-waiting?
4. Why do you think this issue has taken off with such a fervor in recent months?
The telcos almost got away with this — communications law is arcane and full of acronyms. But it's easy for people to understand that the greater social good is to keep the internet open. The benefit to private companies of being able to maintain their business plans is not worth the burden on the rest of us. True, we don't know exactly what these larger social benefits of an open internet will be. But the history of the internet has just begun, and it is already a remarkable story.
Americans aren't “consumers” of the internet (the way we are of cable programming). We are “users,” and almost 50 million of us have posted material online.
People want broadband internet access to be treated like a utility. Government may have a role in ensuring that this happens — it's like keeping the highway system working.
5. Could you sketch out what groundrules you'd like to see govern the internet of the future?
This debate isn't about internet governance. This is about who gets to make decisions about prioritizing particular packets as they get close to broadband subscribers.
I'd like to see blazing competition for broadband access and have us catch up to Japan. We'll continue to only have a few transport providers in this country, because it's expensive to build a broadband network. This means that those basic providers (the cablecos and telcos) will have to open up their facilities to others — the ISPs who connect to them.
I'd like to see many different choices of ISPs, all of whom can make whatever decisions they want about prioritizing particular packets.
We may need to pay back the cablecos and telcos for their reasonable costs of building these broadband networks. But we should not let them control our future. The best and richest future for all of us is the unpredictable future.
[Update: For Christopher Yoo's replies to the same questions, go here.]
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3 Responses to “FAQ on Net Neutrality”
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I have to say that I agree with Prof. Yoo's response to the last question. Asking FOR government regulation of the internet to protect against the threat of monopolists just seems like opening up a can of worms. Is balkanization really so bad anyway? It seems more likely to foster the development of new technologies and business models that an internet in permanent homeostasis.
Is Balkinization bad? We have already seen balkinization on the internet and consumers have soundly rejected it. Remember Compuserve, Prodigy et al of the 80s? There's a reason they aren't around. As far as new business models coming up - the internet produces them all the time. Balkanizing the Internet would stifle development. Let's say you develop a killer new web application - except of the end to end principle network we now have you would need to do a new version of your application for each high speed internet access provider. That's going to make your development vastly more expensive and since you will need to cut a check to each telco to make sure your application works only the very largest firms could afford to do so.
According to the band's web site, Pearl Jam's Lollapalooza webcast was censored by sponsor/webcaster AT&T:
When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them.
During the performance of “Daughter” the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd's “Another Brick in the Wall” but were cut from the webcast:
* “George Bush, leave this world alone.” (the second time it was sung); and
* “George Bush find yourself another home.”
But really, who cares, right? Just a bunch of DFHs whining about the fact that the world is at the mercy of the worst president in American history. Boo hoo!
But yes, there are larger implications. Even for you. Clean-cut American, working-class hero that you are:
AT&T's actions strike at the heart of the public's concerns over the power that corporations have when it comes to determining what the public sees and hears through communications media.
Aspects of censorship, consolidation, and preferential treatment of the internet are now being debated under the umbrella of “Net Neutrality.” Check out The Future of Music or Save the Internet for more information on this issue.
Most telecommunications companies oppose “net neutrality” and argue that the public can trust them not to censor.
That's right. AT&T, like other telcos who say you can “just trust them” not to censor content in the absence of mandatory net neutrality, just did exactly what everyone who's worried about net neutrality always believe they would do.
What'd that take? About ten seconds?
Why don't people just laugh in the faces of industries that claim they can self-regulate?
Do you want Canada to become a country where corporations and certain politicians collude to have dissenting view points shut out? Is that democracy?? Do not be fooled by the 'let the market decide' argument, because when there is only 2 or 3 providers in the market, who have erected barriers to entry so massive that they remain the only ones in the marketplace, then that is not a free market or in the best interest of Canadian citizens. It will create an undemocratic and tiered system, stifle innovation and our voices.